If we have the truth…

Mormon leader J. Reuben Clark said once:

“If we have the truth, it cannot be harmed by investigation. If we have not the truth, it ought to be harmed.”

This is a bit paradoxical coming from the Mormons when so much of their doctrines, writings and church founder history have been found to be false. But I think all religions have a fall back position that if your testimony is true, if you really feel full of the spirit according to church teachings, if you have found your place, then your own truth is greater than the literal truth.

I suspect that persuasion in the age of Trump and Fox works much the same way.

Stephen Colbert called it Truthiness.

The reason I bring it up is because of what James Murdoch said with regard to facts and news. He’s the son of Rupert Murdoch who owns Fox News. James recently resigned from the family business over what appears to be ideological differences. James is the black sheep of the family with a more balanced worldview. Must have been uncomfortable to go to work every day, not to mention those awkward holiday dinners, knowing your parent does not approve of anything you are or think.

(Been there.)

As NBC succumbs to pressure from the Trump administration, and it looks like Comcast as well, it’s useful to keep James Murdoch in mind. He recently said:

“A contest of ideas shouldn’t be used to legitimize disinformation. And I think it’s often taken advantage of. And I think at great news organizations, the mission really should be to introduce fact to disperse doubt – not to sow doubt, to obscure fact, if you will.”

In other words, NBC shouldn’t be obligated to allow disinformation to propagate. By allowing Trump to stage his own event, NBC immediately stamps legitimacy on whatever bilge Trump disgorges tonight.

And this time, because it is a one way debate, there will be no investigation of the truth necessitated by the challenges of the other side. It will go out into the universe unchallenged.

This is what Trump wants. This is just as important as the ratings.

Just remember that next time you turn on NBC news.

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Trump is setting his audience’s expectations:

Trump shits on NBC at length and Chuck Todd and Savannah Guthrie in particular just ahead of his town hall on the network tonight pic.twitter.com/6Sjl3ttsX3

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) October 15, 2020

Let’s see:

1.) The set up is unfair. But he gets an hour of free airtime. (Whoo-hoo! Free campaign ad. Didn’t cost me a thing. See how I do it?)

2.) It’s not a real town hall because he’s getting Savannah Guthrie instead of Lester Holt. Pleeze, don’t insult him. He deserves the best, not some second class chicky baby lady “journalist”. This town hall doesn’t count.

3.) Biden will get softball questions from George Stephanopolous. Say what you will about George, but I’ve seen him put his “friends” through the ringer. Go back and watch any of his interviews with Hillary in 2016. She was shredded by him. This is not going to be easy for Biden. Plus, Biden’s town hall will be twice as long as Trump’s. So, yeah, YOU try to do that for 2 hours. He’s going to need Valium by the time he’s done. Trump? Ehhh, not so much. Maybe Trump was a little afraid of George and thought he might hold him to presidential standards. Can’t have that. So avoiding that second presidential debate for this three ring circus worked out pretty well for Trump.

4.) Trump’s Town Hall will be seeded with Never Trumpers. Don’t I wish. But this is always Trump’s complaint. They’re all against him. If the questioners pose anything more challenging than “What is your favorite color and why is it gold?” or “Why do you think the ladies find you so hot?”, then they are being nasty to him.

Well, if NBC had any dignity at all, it would pull the plug on Trump’s campaign ad after this little whine fest.

But to be honest, the whining wasn’t for NBC, it was for the Trumper out there who is already outraged at the treatment Trump is going to get, hours before he steps foot on the stage.

See how that works, MAGA heads? You’re already livid with the injustice of it all.

So predictable.

Debate Cluster{}#^

Once again, Trump gets special treatment that other candidates don’t get. You could argue that it’s because he’s the president and that is special. Or you could argue that he’s running for re-election and his re-election is by no means guaranteed so he should be treated no differently than any other candidate.

Or you could be like NBC and let the baby have his way with an uninterrupted town hall of his very own where he won’t have to compete with Biden who will be a better town hall participant, probably because he understands issues and has actual policies.

In other words, NBC has just given Trump the ability to talk over Biden because he didn’t want to play by the rules. In order for Trump to do this successfully, Savannah Guthrie has to moderate a room of “undecided” voters (I don’t know where they find these people but there is something seriously wrong with them in the head if they haven’t made up their minds by now.). These “undecided” voters will not have the opportunity to ask questions of the other candidate. Well, a similar thing will be happening with Biden’s town hall on ABC but as far as I can tell, Biden didn’t ask for any special treatment other than the safety of not having a potentially deadly virus spewed at him.

So, what’s the solution?

Well, if you’re a die hard Trump fan or you just enjoy the entertainment of a train wreck, you’ll probably watch Trump on NBC. Nothing about Trump’s town hall is likely to change your mind.

If you want to know what the future holds, you’re better off watching Biden on ABC. It’s a shame they won’t both be responding to the same questions for comparison but there you go. This is the game Trump is playing. It’s not going to resolve any issues for the “undecided” voters.

There was a report yesterday that Trump is planning on dominating the ratings. By doing this, he thinks he can humiliate Biden. I don’t think that’s what motivates Biden. That’s kind of immature for a candidate with presidential aspirations.

But if that’s what Trump is aiming for, I’m not sure we need to reward it. He’s gotten out of being beaten by a much better person and politician. Do we really need to watch him flinging poo at the rest of us on NBC? If not, here’s a suggestion from Amy Siskind:

So the game plan for tonight is to have your tv and streaming devices on NBC, and then one minute before Trump and Biden start their town halls, switch them all to ABC. I am told the ratings companies can pick up on people switching stations. Spread the word!

— Amy Siskind 🏳️‍🌈 (@Amy_Siskind) October 15, 2020

Live by the ratings, die by the ratings.

By the way, NBC, this is the dumbest thing any media outlet has ever done. The only thing I’ll be watching later are the highlights of Trump blathering incoherently on youtube.

You’re welcome.

PS. Someone should fire Chuck Todd over this stunt.

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Carl Bernstein (yes that Carl Bernstein) weighs in with a thread about the NBC Trump Town Hall (that does not serve the voters but merely accommodates Trump’s insatiable need for attention:

How is that NBC News has allowed itself to get conned by Donald Trump and (as of 11 pm Wednesday) continues to abrogate the public trust by not re-scheduling or taping-and-delaying broadcast, or canceling if Trump continues to demand the network’s obeisance? (1/7)

— Carl Bernstein (@carlbernstein) October 15, 2020

Click the tweet to be redirected to the thread. It’s short but gets right to the point.

PSA: PA mail in ballots

I’ve been reading online that some Pennsylvanians haven’t received their mail in ballots therefore the system is corrupt or someone is going to steal ballots and fill them out.

That should be interesting if they get mailed back to the BOE without ever getting to the intended recipient in the first place. You’d have to really work hard to get around the system in PA.

Here are the rules for voting by mail here and some observations:

1.) It takes awhile for the ballot to get to the recipient. I got notified that my mail in ballot would be arriving and if I didn’t receive it in 10-14 days, I would need to call the Board of Elections. From notice to arrival, it took 9 days. There are a couple things about this that are noteworthy. Allegheny mailed ballots in large batches. The first batch was 70000 ballots. Mine was not among them. Mine was in a subsequent batch. There were 314000 mail in ballot requests in Allegheny county alone. So, you know, it takes time.

2.) The mailmen are trustworthy. I truly believe they adhere to the highest professional standards. If they were like me, they had to undergo rigorous background checks to get their jobs. It’s not the mailmen I’m worried about. It’s the guy at the top at the Postal Service. But if you’re really worried, don’t put a yard sign out until you receive your ballot in the mail.

3.) If you don’t receive your ballot after you’ve waited 10-14 days of your notification emails, call your board of elections. Follow the instructions and let them know it’s missing.

4.) If your ballot hasn’t arrived by Election Day, you can still vote in PA. Go to your regular polling place and request a provisional ballot. If your mail in ballot eventually shows up at the BOE, the provisional ballot is discarded. If the mail in ballot does not show up at the BOE, the provisional ballot is the one that counts. Everything has a bar code on it. So, depending on which ballot arrives when will determine whether your vote counts. You can only use one ballot to vote. Pick one.

In other words, if the people I’m seeing on Twitter really haven’t received their ballots, there is a remedy. But if they received their ballots, filled them out, sent them back and think they can get away with voting again at their polling place after reporting their mail in ballot missing (“someone stole my ballot!), then they’re pretty much SOL. Not only that but they might be opening themselves up for investigation. So, if you want to report a ballot missing, do it in the 10-14 day time period. The BOE can’t help you unless they know you never received it.

5.) Ballot harvesting in PA is not allowed. Well, not if you deliver your ballot in person. You have to attest that the ballot is your own, you are not delivering a ballot for someone else and that the signature on the outside envelope is yours. Oh, I suppose that ballot harvesting could happen and someone could deliver 200 ballots to the post office. Something tells me that kind of thing will be caught on video. There are cameras everywhere these days. And the ballots have a bar code for tracking so we’re going to know exactly whose ballots were dumped at the post office. I’m thinking that it’s going to be pretty difficult to collect ballots either voluntarily or involuntarily and mail them en masse without leaving breadcrumbs. But that will be interesting to look out for since the only people I’ve heard who are actually proposing to do it are Republicans who were dumb enough to admit to the scheme on camera.

In summary, it’s going to look pretty hinky to try to cheat with a mail in ballot in PA. There may be ways to do it but we’re not all toothless bigots in this state. The vast majority of Democrats and Republicans in this state will have no trouble voting once and only once for the candidate of their choice.

Whitehouse explains it all.

I was listening to this yesterday while I was working. It’s jaw dropping. Sheldon Whitehouse, Senator from Rhode Island and former US Attorney and state Attorney General, laid out why Amy Coney Barrett is up for the Supreme Court vacancy. The forces behind her are using Roe, Gay marriage and the ACA to hide their real purpose.

The real purpose is to ensure that wealthy donors who won’t identify themselves are never held accountable for anything they do.

Whitehouse shows how donors whose identities are scrubbed are having their wishes carried out by the Supreme Court in 4 areas:

1. Unlimited money to campaigns. (Citizens United)
2. Weakening Civil Juries
3. Weakening Regulatory Agencies
4. Suppressing the vote

It’s a little unfortunate that the video has an MSNBC label on it. Presumably, Fox also has a recording. Nevertheless, this video is well worth the time. It’s not hard to understand. It’s sure as hell not boring.

His entire presentation is something like 28 minutes long. This is the last 9 minutes that doesn’t cover him following the money to Leonard Leo and Carrie Severino. I’d heard of Leo before but slightly. I don’t know anything about Carrie Severino but I have a feeling we’re all going to find out a lot more about her in the coming days.

I don’t think that Whitehouse is saying that there is never any reason for the Supreme Court to overturn legislation.

What he’s saying is that the dark money that got 5 ultra conservative judges to the court is paying off in a lopsided number of rulings in favor of the invisible donors who are interested in the four areas listed above. The rulings are 80-0 with the Roberts 5 outnumbering the other four justices in 80 out of 80 cases that cover those 4 areas listed.

Donors Trust wouldn’t be nearly this successful without its allies in the media. I think we all know who those media actors are who make our regulatory agencies look ridiculous and have succeeded with voter suppression via reducing African Americans and Democratic voters to non-persons. You can’t take a right away from someone unless you don’t think they deserve it and right wing media has been very good at telling its audience who doesn’t deserve it. How does Donors Trust filter down to radio and TV mouthpieces?

Yesterday’s hearing was so eye opening in many ways. Amy Coney Barrett was gently but thoroughly exposed over and over again. Nothing is sacred to her except the fetus. All of our other institutions and things we take for granted, like the peaceful transfer of power, are negotiable. There is more to say on her answer and her irritation with her questioners tomorrow. Amy Klobuchar really got under her skin. Every once in awhile, Barrett’s overachiever soccer mom facade slips and we see the cold, automaton jurist who knows what outcome is expected of her and will simply write an opinion that will fit that outcome. Her only concern is that she needs to figure out ways to tell the general public why they’re getting screwed in a way that is final and parental and yet palatable.

I feel sorry for her kids.

Covid: I’m still on the side of science.

Let’s all share what we know about this virus.

1.) It’s not only as bad as the common cold. That might be the Fox News line or the Trump line but we have to remember that they’ve got conflicts of interest.

2.) The vast majority of us will not get sick or will get only mildly ill from this virus. Some of us will die from it. And there is a whole spectrum of symptoms in between. The truth is that we do not know how our individual bodies will react in advance. That’s what makes it so scary.

3.) Severity of symptoms may be linked to viral load. If you inhale a lot of virus, you’ll get sicker than if you were only casually exposed by the lady standing a few feet in front of you at the check out line.

4.) The virus uses the ACE2 receptor to gain access to your cells. The ACE2 receptor is involved in regulating your blood pressure. So, if you have high blood pressure or are overweight, take your BP meds and/or lose weight.

5.) The virus affects all ages. However, if you are under the age of 11 or 12, you’re unlikely to experience illness. After that age, men are more severely impacted than women and more likely to die.

6.) For every 74 year old male you know who gets a mild case (or a serious case that is treated extremely aggressively with experimental therapeutics) you will find a 17 year old who spent 6 weeks on a ventilator. Or a 27 year old who spent most of her summer barely able to get out of bed.

Which brings me to…

7.) All those people at Trump rallies not wearing masks and piled up next to each other are being very badly mislead into thinking they aren’t in any immediate danger. The truth is more like, there might be one or two people in that crowd who are on the verge of experiencing symptoms and they are shedding copious amounts of virus in their immediate vicinity. The people around them will either get a mild dose or a major dose when they start shouting. Then, unbeknownst to them, they take that virus home to their families where in about 5-10 days later, they will start passing it around to their children. Sort of like what Kellyanne did to her daughter Claudia after she went to the Rose Garden Massacre.

8.) I believe Trump had more than a mild case of Covid. He was on supplemental oxygen. When was the last time you had supplemental oxygen when you had a cold. Since his hospitalization, he has looked really awful and has sounded just as bad with heavy breathing and coughing. Gradually, almost everyone recovers. It looks like he is slowly getting better. But it hasn’t been without a cost. He has shortened his speeches significantly and takes the short stairs into AF1. There are images that show a bandage on his hand where an IV might go. Is that for saline? A bit more remdesivir? Or is it for the steroids that gave him such energy?

Can’t you picture it? There’s Trump energized by a nice dose of dexamethasone thinking, jeez, why didn’t anyone tell me about this stuff before?? If I had more of this, I could get through campaign season seriously kicking Biden’s ass.

Do I think that’s what’s going on? I have no way of knowing but some intrepid reporters might want to stop badgering Biden on the court packing question that he has answered 50 million times and get Trump to answer the question: “are you still on steroids? And is that safe?”

9.) Another vaccine manufacturer just paused another phase 3 trial due to a serious adverse effect. I heard about it as I was drifting off to sleep so I need to get more info on this. Ah, here it is. It’s a Johnson and Johnson vaccine. No need to despair yet. It might just be temporary and there are plenty of vaccine candidates in the pipeline.

10.) Going back to point 1, if you’re so convinced that Covid is nothing worse than a cold because Trump is minimizing the threat so you whip kissers get back to work, then you should not be in a hurry for a vaccine. In fact, I’m counting on you to happily volunteer to be the last people on earth to get a vaccine at all. Ever.

Trump untied the bigots’ tongues, Gisele Fetterman got a mouthful

You may have already heard about this but if this hasn’t hit your news feed yet, let me tell you what happened to Gisele Fetterman, our lieutenant governor’s wife.

First, Gisele is a role model. She lives her values. Her family lives in a former used car dealership building that was converted to a home in Braddock, PA, about 7 miles from where I live. She was born in Brazil and came to the US as a child. After she got her immigration status straightened out she studied nutrition and married the mayor of Braddock, now our Lieutenant Governor, John Fetterman.

Gisele started a Free Store for people in need of work clothes. She also started a food rescue program that collects and uses good food that stores and restaurants might have otherwise thrown away. So, she’s the real deal. Oh, she’s also adorable and has three kids.

Anyway, she went to a local Aldi’s yesterday to pick up some fruit when a woman started harassing her. The woman was persistent and followed her out to the parking lot where Gisele caught this on video:

*TRIGGER WARNING* I love love love this country but we are so deeply divided. I ran to the local grocery store and was met by and verbally assaulted by this woman who repeatedly told me I do not belong here. The confrontation continued into the parking lot where I was able to pic.twitter.com/kzSoxCVJ2x

— Gisele Barreto Fetterman (@giselefetterman) October 11, 2020

I can remember a time when doing this was unthinkable. Saying these words to anyone was unforgivable. But here it is. Trump has given these people permission to act on their basest instincts.

Since the episode happened yesterday, there has been an outpouring of support for Gisele. The governor has weighed in and John Fetterman, 6’8”, tattooed and bald, has been able to speak to the woman who unleashed her hatred.

Meanwhile, Gisele is shaken but I hope it isn’t too long before she gets back out there, knowing we have her back. And never leaves home without her security detail again until we vote Trump out and push the MAGA genie back into the bottle.

We’ve run the Amy Coney Barrett experiment already. It was called Romania.

Back in the 80’s, living while female in Romania was pretty awful. Nicolai Ceausescu promised Romanian women a fabulous life of having it all with plenty of good work and daycare and maternity leave as long as they kept having babies.

The ideal Romanian woman at the time would have been Amy Coney Barrett. Well educated, having a great career and lots of children. Oh sure you could have all of the independence of a working woman as long as you saw yourself as a mother first. That was your first priority.

So, to turn women’s heads towards motherhood, the Romanian government at first severely limited access to abortion. Then they cut off access to abortion completely and criminalized it. It also cut off access to birth control. Single women without children were penalized with higher taxes. All women of childbearing age were subject to compulsory gynecological exams to check their fertility. The intent was to increase the birth rate and encourage motherhood.

That worked splendidly. The number of births increased dramatically. What didn’t materialize was all of the other government assistance and programs that were promised. And as the economy did not improve, many families were strapped with more children than they could provide for. That lead to an explosion of children in orphanages.

The difference between the US and Romania is that here, there is no silly talk of any paid maternity leave, National daycare policies or mentoring women in the workplace so they become the persons they were meant to be. We’ll have none of that.

But what we will have is an ok from the Supreme Court to chip away at reproductive rights for women at an even faster pace. The states will put even more barriers to access in place with Barrett’s approval. Will it lead to more and better motherhood? That’s doubtful. But it will definitely lead to more unwanted children.

Oh, I guess poor women will just become bearers of other people’s children instead of giving the little beasties to orphanages. The Amy Coney Barretts of the world won’t have to go to third world countries to acquire extra kids. But it’s difficult to argue that restrictions on reproductive choice will improve the maternal instincts of anyone who is subjected to the new state laws.

In Romania, the abortion law was overturned in 1990. Over the last 30 years, the number of abortions has decreased dramatically there. The birthrate has declined. But maybe that’s a function of the economy and state programs to support families with children.

Nevertheless, Romanians have no intention of returning to the forced motherhood days:

Nelson said that Romania offers a cautionary tale of what happens when a state tries to control reproductive rights. The new Alabama law raises questions about what kind of support the state would provide if someone doesn’t have the option of ending a pregnancy when the fetus is found to have profound birth defects. 

“Does the state have the bandwidth to take care of those kids and support the families?” he said in an interview. 

When communism collapsed in Romania in December 1989, one of the first acts of the transitional government was to overturn the ban on abortion. Romania remains a highly conservative country, and in recent years there have been renewed calls to outlaw abortion, spearheaded by the influential Orthodox Church and other religious groups. 

Bucur, the author of Birth of Democratic Citizenship: Women and Power in Modern Romania, is skeptical that the new movement will gain any political momentum.

“I think the real, raw firsthand memory is still too present in still too many voters. I don’t think there’s any intelligent politicians who would make it happen,” she said.

Well, there are plenty of unintelligent politicians in this country that have used the reproductive rights of women as their stepping stone to power. They’ve done it without much thought in order to out-extreme their competition in primaries in highly gerrymandered districts.

But the experiment has been run in Romania and El Salvador. We know what the data shows. There’s no excuse for going through with another irresponsible experiment unless the abortion issue is cover for some other policies the zealous evangelical base wouldn’t like at all.

Either way, the nomination and unavoidable confirmation of Amy Coney Barrett is going to happen. And some evangelicals are finally realizing that maybe they should be careful what they wished for as this recent opinion piece in WaPo shows.

It took Trump and the Republicans’ insatiable lust for power to finally wake them up. But as for abortion restrictions themselves, they can’t pretend they didn’t know what the outcome of all their idealizing of motherhood and enforced morality would be. The example happened in modern times and it was horrific.

Well that was easy #NoNakedBallots

I voted today at the Ice Rink at North Park in Allegheny county. I don’t know whose genius idea that was but it was perfect for me and all the other people dropping off mail in ballots. The ice rink has plenty of parking. We parked at the lot down the road from the rink and walked over.

Voters are directed to blue dots on the ground to maintain safe distancing. The ballot collectors are located where the rink ticket takers normally sit. You hand them your ballot and show your ID. Then they ask three questions: Is the ballot you’re delivering your own? Is the signature on the outer envelope yours? Did you remember to use the secrecy envelope? (Naked ballots are rejected).

Hand them the ballot. Grab an “I voted” sticker. Take home Biden/Harris yard sign. Enjoy the rest of your trip to one of the nicest parks in Pittsburgh.

The alternate drop off sites will be open on Saturday and Sunday throughout the month of October. They are full service sites, not just drop boxes. So, if you’re in Allegheny county and you got your mail in ballot and you love your mailman but don’t trust the guy running the post office, this is a great alternative to delivering your ballot to the City-County building in downtown Pittsburgh. Not that there’s anything wrong with that but the hours don’t work for most working people and the park election service sites do.

Yes, YES!!! I voted for Biden/Harris. Please take me off your nag text list.

PS to Biden campaign. You need to deliver more yard signs. I got the last one at about 12pm.

I’m voting tomorrow

I received my ballot in the mail last week and filled it out immediately. My plan was to drop it off at the City-County building downtown but they are only open during working hours. From 9-4:30. I didn’t think I could make it.

Fortunately, Allegheny county is opening 4 collection locations starting tomorrow. So I’m planning to go to one located at a nearby park. It opens at 9am. From what I understand it is an election services location. I think you can register, get a ballot printed out, vote and hand it in. Sort of like early voting in other states but this is a first for Pennsylvania.

My ballot is all ready to go. I put it in my secrecy envelope and then signed the outer envelope. Although I have no idea what to expect, I wouldn’t be surprised if there is pent up demand to handing ballots over in person. Allegheny sent out 314,000 ballots. Let’s see who shows up.

Western PA breathes sigh of relief.

Mostly because we can still breathe.

#BREAKING NEWS: Plans for President Trump to visit Beaver County on Monday are off, sources tell KDKA. https://t.co/iADkKMiQXD

— KDKA (@KDKA) October 9, 2020

***************

Pittsburgh media can be harsh:

I’m surprised they didn’t call him a jagoff. Well, Election Day is 25 days away. There’s still time…

Forgot to mention that the overwhelming sentiment of commenters on the KDKA thread is running against infectious DC man from coming to the Pittsburgh area.